


waiting on something good

by likebrightness



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 20:05:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8547262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likebrightness/pseuds/likebrightness
Summary: Alex is trying so hard to be okay with everything, is trying to act like it doesn't hurt that she grew up in a world that didn't let her realize this was even an option. Alex spent so long thinking something was wrong with her, and Maggie suspects that maybe she still thinks something’s wrong with her, but Alex is being chipper.Maggie lets her. Maggie lets her be whatever she wants to be.





	

 

Alex is Bambi. Alex is an innocent baby deer gay. Maggie is waiting to see her get her heart crushed.

Maggie doesn't _want_ Alex to get her heart crushed, it just seems like a thing that is going to happen. Alex is trying so hard to be okay with everything, is trying to act like it doesn't hurt that she grew up in a world that didn't let her realize this was even an option. Alex spent so long thinking something was wrong with her, and Maggie suspects that maybe she _still_ thinks something’s wrong with her, but Alex is being chipper.

Maggie lets her. Maggie lets her be whatever she wants to be.

-

Maggie remembers how hard it was. Even though she knew, was certain, it was hard. She can't imagine getting through so much of your life before understanding, how disorienting that would be.

So she lets Alex be whatever she wants to be, and she is whatever Alex needs her to be.

What Alex decides she needs, though, is a wingman.

Maggie feels too old for the bars, but she can't tell Alex that, can't take the experience away from Alex just because she figured things out later in life. So Maggie goes to the bars, doesn’t sit close enough to Alex for anyone to think they’re together, and tries to be a wingman.

It doesn’t go well.

It’s not Maggie’s fault, she’s pretty sure. Alex is _nervous_ , and jittery, and completely fucking adorable, to be honest, which is not a thing Maggie is supposed to be thinking. Maggie is her friend and her wingman and that’s all Maggie wants to be, really. Alex is an innocent baby deer gay, and Maggie doesn’t want to be the one to crush her heart.

Anyway, Alex’s nerves are why the night goes poorly.

“It’s cool,” Maggie says afterward, when they’re walking down the sidewalk outside the bar. “Just because you don’t get laid your first time out—”

“Who even cares about getting laid?” Alex says. “I’d just like another woman to _look_ at me.”

“Danvers.” Maggie stops where she is. “Hold up, do you not think anyone looked at you tonight?”

Alex obviously doesn’t, her eyebrows furrowing pathetically. Maggie laughs at her. She looks _miserable_.

“How are you an agent of any kind?” Maggie asks. She starts listing them off on her fingers. “The blonde just inside the door when we first walked in. The black girl down the bar from us. The girl you talked to when she came to the bar to get drinks for her friends.”

She keeps going until she runs out of fingers. Alex stares at her.

“Really?”

“Apparently you were too nervous to notice.”

Alex gets this little smile, it starts in the corner of her mouth. She kicks her shoes at the ground and when she looks up again, it’s lit up her whole face.

“So a not terrible first night out, I guess.”

“No, Danvers, not a terrible first night out.”

-

The second night out— still no one hits on her.

Maggie makes sure Alex notices the looks this time, and she does, does some eye flirting with a couple of chicks, but no one comes over to talk to her. She is despondent.

“ _Why_?” she groans as she walks Maggie home. “Is it my outfit? Am I just not cute? Have I thought I was straight for so long I don’t put off a gay enough vibe?”

Maggie takes a deep breath. “Okay, Danvers, I am going to say this once and then never again,” she says. Alex’s eyes pop up to hers, interested. “You’re hot, okay? You can’t judge yourself based on interactions with drunk people at a gay bar.”

Alex bumps their shoulders together. “Thanks, Sawyer.”

It’s a nice moment, until,

“I can’t believe you think I’m _hot_.”

“Shut up, Danvers.”

-

Alex joins an app— Her or Tinder or one of those, Maggie tries not to know much about it. Except Alex is now constantly smiling at her phone. When they go out after a case, when they grab drinks on a Wednesday night, she never lets the phone out of reach. Maggie almost beats her at pool because she’s so distracted by it.

“Found a better way to connect with queer girls than gay bars?”

Alex beams. “Well, yeah, I mean, I guess. It’s pretty good.”

Maggie grins. “Want to get another round?”

“Actually, uh, I think I’m gonna make it an early night,” Alex says. She looks at her phone, blushes, and types a message. “I’m gonna meet someone for breakfast tomorrow.”

“Pack the U-Haul,” Maggie says.

Alex tilts her head at her. “What?”

“Christ, Danvers, we have to get you educated in gay.”

-

Alex blows her off four times in two weeks. Maggie doesn’t even mind. Maggie remembers moving from Nebraska, remembers what it was like to suddenly be in a place where there were people like her.

Plus, Alex feels bad about checking out on her, so she makes guilty puppy faces and buys her drinks the next time they go out, so no, Maggie really doesn’t mind.

“How you been, Danvers?” she asks when they've gotten their drinks, perched on stools at the bar.

“ _Great_ ,” Alex gushes.

A woman bumps into her before she can say anything else.

“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry,” the woman says.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Alex says. She beams. Maggie sees the woman’s friends behind her, very clearly grinning, and rolls her eyes.

“Maybe I could buy you a drink to make up for it?”

“I’ve already got one,” Alex says. “But maybe, um, a dance?”

Maggie’s impressed. Apparently Alex picked up some confidence in talking to women.

“Is that—” Alex turns to Maggie. “I don’t want to abandon you.”

“Go, Danvers. I’ll be fine.”

Alex gives her a blinding smile before heading with the woman to the dance floor.

-

Maggie finishes her drink and another one by the time Alex rushes back to her, flushed face and wild eyes.

“I think I just made out with someone who could be my child.”

Maggie laughs. “Danvers, I don’t know exactly how old you are but I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

“She was an _infant_.”

“The girl you left with wasn’t even that young.”

Alex goes bright red, buries her face in her hands.

“Ah,” Maggie says. “Not the girl you left with, then. Did you get her number?”

Alex groans from behind her hands. “I can’t get her number; she was an _infant_.”

-

She’s not an infant, it turns out. Her name is Lila, and she tracks Alex down off the dance floor. Maggie tries not to smirk as she watches Lila bat her eyes and Alex stumble over her words. Alex _can_ get her number, and she does; Lila takes Alex’s phone right out of her hands and programs it in herself.

It’s cute to watch, and if there’s a tiny flare of jealousy in Maggie’s chest over the way Alex stares after Lila when she walks away, no one else needs to know. It feels different, somehow, than watching Alex grinning at her phone; it’s different seeing it in person.

-

The next Friday night, Alex asks Maggie out for drinks, and Maggie teases her.

“What, is Lila busy?”

Alex ducks her head. “Uh, yeah, she’s got some thing for school.”

“Oh my God, Danvers, she’s still in school?”

“ _Graduate_ school,” Alex says, blushing. “Whatever, do you want to get drinks or not?”

They go someplace new, not a gay bar or a cop bar or the alien bar. Alex fidgets in their booth, orders a water at first.

“You asked me out for drinks and you’re getting a water?”

She shrugs. Maggie gives her a look, but Alex is too busy picking at her cocktail napkin to notice.

Maggie talks about her non-alien cases of the week. Alex doesn’t talk much, just listens and laughs, rolls her eyes at the stupidity of criminals. Eventually Maggie runs out of stories.

“You want me to start making up cases now, or are you gonna talk to me about whatever’s on your mind?”

Alex starts picking at her napkin again. Maggie rolls her eyes.

“Is it about Lila?”

Alex nods.

“Is it not going well?”

“No, no it’s going great,” Alex says, but she’s still not smiling.

“Then what is it?”

“I mean…” Alex trails off.

“Out with it, Danvers.”

Alex takes a big breath like she’s preparing herself. “We’ve made out a lot, okay? But I’m maybe a little intimidated at the thought of doing, like...other stuff.”

“You’re afraid you don’t know how to have sex with a girl?”

“Jesus, Maggie!” Alex looks around furtively. “Could you be a little more discreet about it?”

Maggie shrugs, and smirks, and waits until Alex says it herself.

It doesn’t take her long. “Yes, okay? Maybe I am a little nervous. Like. What do I do?”

“You touch yourself, right?” Maggie asks like the thought alone doesn’t set her on fire. Alex’s face is bright red, even in the dim lights of the bar, and she nods, once, quick. “Just do that, but to her.”

Alex doesn’t say anything for a while, and Maggie doesn’t look at her, lets her have the moment to herself.

When she does talk, her voice is small. “But what if I’m not any good?”

“You’ll be fine,” Maggie says. “You’ve got nice hands, and you’re observant— that first night out aside. No matter who you’re with, just communicate with them and you’re going to be able to figure it out as you go.”

“What do my hands have to do with— oh.” Alex’s eyes go comically wide. “ _Oh_.”

Maggie laughs at her, because it’s easier than thinking anymore about her hands.

“You gonna ditch me for Lila now?” Maggie teases.

“No, we’re, um, we’re hanging out tomorrow night. So. Yeah.”

“You’ll be fine, Danvers.”

Alex’s cheeks are red. “Right. Can we change the subject?”

-

Maggie catches a case Sunday morning, definite alien involvement, and she doesn’t want to call Alex at eight am, but she has to.

It gets worse when Lila picks up the damn phone.

“You’re not Danvers,” Maggie says.

“Oh, um, right, one sec.”

Maggie is pretty sure she can actually _hear_ the blush in Alex’s voice when she gets on the phone.

“They let infants answer phones these days?” Maggie hopes it comes off as teasing, though she’s afraid there’s too much bite to it. There’s this flame of jealousy in her chest, is all, and she’s trying to tamp it down.

“What do you need, Sawyer?”

“You,” Maggie says and pauses, just for a heartbeat, “at 52nd and Armitage. We got ourselves a body.”

“Be there in twenty.” Alex hangs up before Maggie can say anything else.

The jealousy thing doesn’t even make sense. Maggie knew what Alex was doing last night; Maggie gave Alex advice about what she was doing last night. It’s just that being confronted with it, slapped in the face with it over the phone first thing in the morning— it was a bit much, maybe.

Maggie reminds herself that Alex is an innocent baby deer gay, and she is her _friend._

-

“How was last night?” Maggie asks it before saying hello, before explaining the scene, before anything.

“Uh,” Alex almost doesn’t make it completely under the crime scene tape. “It was okay.”

Maggie weighs not really wanting to hear about the girl she’s kind of into getting it on with someone else against the way Alex’s cheeks go red and her fingers get fidgety when she’s embarrassed. Embarrassed Alex wins out, easily.

“Just okay?”

Alex scratches at her neck, looks anywhere but at Maggie. “It was good, okay? Shut up.”

Maggie smirks.

“Tell me about our victim,” Alex says.

-

Alex and Lila date for three months. Alex is a ball of joy, full of smiles and laughter and Maggie loves it. She’s still Alex, stubborn and loyal to a fault, but she’s looser, like her joints have been oiled. She was stiff, when Maggie met her, stiff and tough, and now she flows. She’s _happy_ and Maggie is happier for her.

It makes Maggie forget that Alex is Bambi.

Forget until 10 pm on a Tuesday night, when she gets a call from Alex.

Maggie picks up with a smile. “Danvers.”

The only thing she hears are shuddering breaths.

“Hey, you there?” Alex still doesn’t respond. “Alex, are you okay?”

“We broke up.”

Maggie’s heart sinks. “Shit, Danvers, that sucks. Where are you?”

“H-home.”

“Is it cool if I come over?”

Alex sniffles, and Maggie wonders if she’s nodding over the phone.

“Yeah,” she says finally.

“Gimme ten minutes, okay?”

“Yeah.”

She sounds dejected, and Maggie’s chest hurts.

-

Alex opens the door with red eyes and wet cheeks. Maggie wants to kiss her. Immediately, Maggie wants to kiss her. It’s a bad habit, one Maggie has never quite been able to kick, her little white knight syndrome. She wants to save women she cares about, wants to be their hero, and it’s no different when Alex opens the door crying.

“Hey,” she says instead.

“Hey.”

Alex shuffles aside to let her in, closes the door behind her, and then just stands there, head hung toward the floor.

“Have you eaten dinner?”

Alex shrugs.

“I’m ordering pizza,” Maggie says.

She calls Alex’s favorite place. It’s not the closest— delivery takes upwards of an hour, but she has a feeling she’ll be here for a while. By the time she’s done ordering, Alex is sitting on the couch, knees tucked into her chest, staring into space.

Maggie sits close enough that their arms brush together.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Alex rests her temple against her knee, face turned toward Maggie. She shakes her head.

“Want a hug?”

Alex takes a shuddering breath. She swallows, eyes clenching closed. A tear spills over the bridge of her nose and soaks into her leggings. She nods.

“C’mere.”

Maggie turns and wraps her arms around Alex. Alex, still seated curled in a fetal position, just sort of leans sideways into her. Her shoulder digs into Maggie’s collarbone, Maggie gets a faceful of Alex’s hair. Alex sniffs, and trembles a little, and Maggie holds her tighter. Alex’s hand comes up to hold onto Maggie’s elbow.

Maggie lets Alex cry. For a while, she cries. She shakes and shudders and Maggie smooths a hand over her hair and never shushes her, never tells her it’s going to be okay. When Alex’s crying gets too hard, her breaths coming fast and short, Maggie takes a deep breath. Lets it out slowly. Does it again. It takes Alex a minute to notice, but eventually she starts trying to keep pace with Maggie’s breathing. Slow and steady.

When she’s calmed down a little, Alex pulls away. Maggie lets her go, keeps one hand against her back.

Alex’s face is splotchy red. She pushes her hands at it, smears tears and probably snot, too.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Nothing to be sorry about, Danvers,” Maggie cuts off that line of thinking.

She rubs up and down Alex’s back. Alex leans into her hand.

“She said— she said I wasn’t good at being in a relationship,” Alex sniffles. “Said maybe I didn’t have enough _experience_.”

Maggie’s not going to kiss her. She’s not.

“What kind of breakup this is?” Maggie asks. “I mean, am I allowed to say mean things about her?”

Alex chews her bottom lip. She nods.

“She’s an idiot,” Maggie says immediately. “She’s an infant who’s in grad school and doesn’t understand real life. Not good at being in a relationship, what the fuck does that even mean?”

Alex sniffs. “I don’t know. I wasn’t— around? Enough?”

That’s a fucking lie. The past three months, Maggie’s spent almost no time with Alex outside of work; Alex was always with her girlfriend. Maggie won’t say that, doesn’t want Alex feeling bad about it like she knows she would.

“You have a _job_ ,” she says instead. “And I know she thought you were just a researcher or whatever, but she should understand that a job means commitments.”

“It does,” Alex says. “And like, I was trying. I really tried never to miss any plans we had. And I just— I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

“Hey,” Maggie says. “This doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.”

Alex rolls her eyes. “Obviously, I did, or we would—”

“Or you didn’t, and she just decided she didn’t want a relationship anymore,” Maggie says. “Or she couldn’t handle someone who wasn’t with her every damn minute. Or any number of reasons that have nothing to do with you doing anything wrong.”

Alex considers that for a moment.

“It’s just that— I’m not even that— it’s not like I _loved_ her or anything, you know? I could've, maybe, but I didn't yet. But she made it seem—” she trails off. She rubs at her eyes. “What if I’m too late? What if I missed my chance by not figuring this out when I was a teenager?”

“Fuck that,” Maggie says, fierce. Alex’s eyes snap up to hers. “That’s bullshit, Danvers. What— since I’m 30 and not with the love of my life I’ve got no chance? Aged out of options?”

“No, I mean, not _you_. You knew. You have an idea of how—”

“Dating’s _hard_ , Danvers. It’s hard for everyone and that’s okay. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. That doesn’t mean you figured shit out too late. So you got your heart stomped on. Congrats, join the club.”

“You really don’t think I—”

“Alex,” Maggie sighs. The first name stops Alex mid-sentence. “I really think you’re gonna be fine.”

There’s so much more she wants to add— about how Alex is strong and beautiful and funny. She’s kind and loyal and a total nerd, which is really cute, the way her eyes light up talking about shit Maggie doesn’t understand at all. But Maggie is her friend. Maggie is not her girlfriend, and she sure as shit isn't going to be her _rebound_.

“Look, Danvers, you’re fantastic, and I love you, and you’re gonna be okay.”

Alex ducks her head, sniffles a bit. When she looks back up at Maggie, she’s got this little smirk.

“Sawyer, I just got out of a relationship, so I mean, I’m really flattered that you love me, but I think maybe I should just be single for a while.”

Maggie rolls her eyes. “You know that’s not how I meant it, nerd.”

“Sure it’s not.”

It’s not how she meant it. She’s like eighty percent sure.

“You want to watch something?” Alex asks. She sounds nervous, like maybe Maggie is going to say no, like Maggie didn’t rush over as soon as she called, didn’t order pizza that still hasn’t arrived yet. Maggie doesn’t know what made this girl think everyone is going to leave her, but she’s sure Lila is at least part of it. She wonders if she could get a traffic cop to give her a ticket for something.

“Yeah. What do you got?”

“I’ve been watching Planet Earth again,” Alex says. “I mean, I watched when it first came out but they’re doing another one soon, and, I don’t know, I’ve just been watching it again. So we could watch some. If you wanted.”

“Nerd,” Maggie says again, gets a smile out of Alex. “Planet Earth sounds good.”

The pizza arrives just as they start an episode, so they pause. Maggie pays the guy while Alex gets plates and napkins from the kitchen.

“You got black olives,” Alex says when Maggie plops the pizza box on the coffee table and opens it.

“I did,” Maggie says.

“You hate black olives.” Alex is looking at her like she’s done something amazing instead of just ordered a certain topping on pizza.

“I do,” Maggie says. “But you like them, and I can pick them off.”

“You’re too good to me.”

“You deserve it,” Maggie says. Which. She should have gone with the teasing route, probably, but it’s true, Alex does deserve it, and Maggie’s not sure she knows she does. “You can even have all my extra olives.”

“You’re definitely too good for me,” Alex says.

Maggie rolls her eyes and pulls a piece of pizza onto her plate. “Push play.”

They eat pizza and watch Planet Earth, and Maggie picks black olives off every slice she eats. After eating, she gets up to use the restroom. When she gets back, Alex is stretched the length of the couch. Alex lifts up her feet like she expects Maggie to slide underneath them. Instead, Maggie walks to the other side, where Alex’s head is on a pillow. Alex sighs and starts to get up.

“You can keep lying down, Danvers,” Maggie says.

It’s as close to _put your head in my lap_ as she’s going to get. Alex understands anyway, if the wary look she gives her is any indication.

She does it, though, pushes herself up just enough for Maggie to sit, then adjusts the pillow over Maggie’s lap and puts her head back down.

Maggie feels how long it takes her to really settle. She’s holding herself stiff, like she doesn’t really think she should to be doing this. Maggie wonders if she should. Eventually, though, Alex gets too into the show to remember to be stiff. She relaxes as an arctic fox buries an egg in the ground.

When that fox later catches a baby gosling, Alex sniffles. Maggie considers teasing her for being a softie. She gets a better idea, though, and carefully slides a hand into Alex’s hair.

Alex freezes. This is probably a terrible idea. Maggie scratches against Alex’s scalp anyway. Alex holds herself still for another second or two before she melts, her body going slack. Maggie combs her fingers through gentle tangles, comes back to scratch again. Alex makes a noise of contentment, and Maggie smiles at the bison on the screen.

-

Maggie doesn’t realize when Alex falls asleep. She thinks she’s just relaxed as Maggie gently plays with her hair. But at some point she falls asleep, and Maggie doesn’t notice until Alex snores quietly.

To have gone from basically sobbing on the couch to falling asleep on it, body splayed, free of tension? Maggie would call it a pretty successful night. She lifts Alex’s head and carefully slides out from under her. She has to open a few cabinets to find ziploc bags for the leftover pizza, gets it in the fridge and the box in the trash.

Alex is still passed out on the couch when she’s done.

Maggie puts a hand on her shoulder. “Danvers.” Alex shrugs her off. “You can’t sleep on the couch. Your neck will regret it tomorrow.”

Alex squeaks around a yawn, blinking up at her. She offers Maggie both hands, and Maggie takes them, pulls her to her feet. Alex wavers like she’s got sea legs, and Maggie catches her around the waist.

“C’mon, baby girl,” she says. She cringes, but keeps going like the pet name didn’t slip out. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Alex barely opens her eyes, almost runs into the coffee table on the way to her room. Maggie keeps her arm around her and thinks she should have left her on the couch. When they get to Alex’s bedroom and Maggie lets her go, Alex pretty much faceplants into her bed. Maggie takes a step back.

“I’m not tucking you in.”

“Nngh,” Alex says.

Maggie smiles. “Night, Danvers,” she says and turns to leave.

“Maggie.”

She stops, takes a breath, looks back at Alex. Alex has lifted her head, barely, off the pillow.

“I love you, too, you know?”

Maggie rolls her eyes. “Go to sleep.”

When she’s safely on the other side of the door to Alex’s apartment, Maggie leans against it for a moment, feels her heart racing, and lets herself grin.

-

Maggie takes Alex to coffee shops instead of bars after the break up. She takes her to diners and hole-in-the-wall taquerias. It’s two weeks before Alex calls her on it.

“Honestly, I could use pretty girls who wanted to buy me drinks right now.”

“Excuse you,” Maggie says. “I bought your coffee last time.”

Alex bumps her shoulder. “Pretty girls who might want to date me.”

Maggie’s not sure that counts her out anymore. It does, it probably does, it should. Alex might not be Bambi anymore, but she doesn’t seem any harder than she was before. Still, Maggie _wants_. Alex is beautiful and soft and if Maggie trusted herself, she'd want to take care of her, to be careful with her. But Maggie has never been good with anything marked fragile.

So she takes Alex to their usual gay bar, and doesn't sit close enough for anyone to think they're together, and tries to be a wingman.

It goes about as well as that first night. Alex isn't jittery anymore, just sad. She's got a cloud over her head, and it gets bigger the longer they're there. Maggie moves her stool closer to Alex’s.

“They all seem so _young_ ,” Alex says.

Maggie can't really disagree. She doesn't know how to navigate this situation with Alex feeling too old.

“Don't worry, Danvers,” she says. “You may not be a spring chicken, but you've still got it.”

Alex rolls her eyes. “You gonna tell me I'm hot every time I'm sad?”

Maggie presses her lips together, shrugs. “If it helps,” she says. “Girl power, all that shit.”

She’s not sure how she got from _I’m going to say this once and never again_ to _I’ll tell you as much as you need me to_ , but here she is.

Alex finishes her drink. “Whatever. I’m gonna head home. I think Planet Earth sounds better than this.”

“Want company?” Maggie offers.

“I don’t need you to pity watch Planet Earth with me, Sawyer,” Alex says.

“Right.”

Alex leaves. Maggie stays, orders a whiskey. She sips slowly until a woman approaches her.

“Is this seat taken?” the woman asks. She’s got long blonde hair, and she is so _not_ what Maggie wants, Maggie rolls her eyes at herself.

“No,” Maggie says, finishing her drink. “But neither is this one.”

She leaves.

-

They go out a few more times, but even when Alex does get hit on, she doesn’t seem like she cares. Eventually she invites Kara out to the bar with them one night.

“Both the Danvers sisters are queer?” Maggie asks.

“Oh no,” Kara adjusts her glasses, and every time she does that, Maggie can’t believe they’re a good enough disguise for Supergirl. “I’m just an ally who wanted to tag along. That’s okay, right?”

“You’re fine,” Maggie says.

Alex is a bit cheerier with Kara by her side, but it doesn’t last long. A girl comes up and asks Kara to dance. Kara giggles and blushes a little, and _agrees_. Maggie thinks _ally_ might not be the right word for her after all. Kara follows the girl toward the dance floor, and Alex stares after them.

“You okay, Danvers?”

Alex blinks a few times and looks at her. “What? Yeah. I’m fine.”

Maggie levels her with a stare.

“She’s just—” Alex sighs, obviously frustrated. “I love my sister more than anything in the world, but...”

When it becomes clear she’s not going to continue on her own, Maggie prompts her. “But what?”

“She has been the perfect child since she arrived here,” Alex says. “Even if she did something wrong, she was just learning. And that’s fine, really, I’m glad Mom didn’t hold her to a stupid stressful standard like she held me— like she still holds me. But sometimes it feels like even if she did, Kara would surpass it. Because Kara does everything well, she wins, all the time. And just once I’d like to come out on top. It’s not fair that she’s even winning at this, this thing that is supposed to be mine, that isn’t even a part of her life.”

Maggie’s white knight syndrome rears its head. She tries to settle it.

“Just,” Alex sighs. “Why does she have to be the one to get hit on?”

Yeah, Maggie can’t just let it lie.

“Look, Danvers,” she says. “Your sister is getting hit on because she’s a puppy who looks like she wants to please you—”

“Ew.” Alex pulls a face.

“And you’re not getting hit on because you look badass and intimidating and harder to approach. She doesn’t _win_ anything, especially not that chick, who is so not hot enough for you.”

Alex looks at her. This is stupid, and if Maggie thought about it for a minute, she would know it was stupid. But her adrenaline is pumping so fast she keeps talking without thinking, and everything she’s felt for weeks, months, even, just comes out.  

“Every fucking time we’ve come in here since your breakup, you just get _sadder_ , and it’s so _stupid_ , because you’re amazing, okay? You are and that’s true regardless of whether drunk girls hit on you or not.”

“Are _you_ hitting on me?”

Maggie deflates a little, takes a breath. “I’m just saying. I’m so sick of seeing you judge yourself based on how your nights in here go. Or even based off Lila. I’m so sick of seeing you thinking you’re not good enough, when you’re the best girl in here, every time.”

“You’re definitely hitting on me.”

Maggie doesn’t really think she has an argument otherwise at this point, has tipped her hand so far she’s shown Alex every card, so she shrugs. “I’m being honest.”

Alex picks at her napkin, and Maggie feels the stupidity catch up with her. She feels like a moron.

“I, um,” Alex starts, and Maggie can tell she’s trying to come up with a nice way to say _thanks anyway_. It’s fine, Maggie doesn’t even care. Except then what Alex says instead is, “I’ve always thought _you_ were the best girl in here, personally.”

Maggie looks up to see Alex smiling at her, soft and gentle and nervous, and Maggie’s heart blooms in her chest.

“Yeah?” Maggie says.

“Yeah.”

“You’re not, uh—” and Maggie isn’t usually one to trip over her words, but she feels off balance here. “You’re not just rebounding?”

“C’mon,” Alex laughs, sudden and bright. “You’re literally the reason I figured out I was gay. Obviously I’ve been into you for a lot longer than just a rebound.”

Maggie blinks at her. “You’ve been into me the whole time? Since you came out?”

“Maybe,” Alex says, blushing. “But you’ve thought I was hot since at least the second time we came here, so.”  

Maggie bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling too big. The idea of Alex liking her from the time she came out, of Alex spending night after night in this place with her, looking for other women but being into her at the same time— they've both spent months pretending, it seems.

But Maggie remembers why she pretended, why she didn’t do anything. She remembers Alex is an innocent baby deer gay, and remembers she doesn’t trust herself.

“I don’t want to break your heart,” she says.

Alex shrugs, smiling at her. “So don’t.”

“Alex,” Maggie says.

Alex scrunches her nose at the use of her first name. It’s so adorable Maggie can’t remember if she had anything else to say.

“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” Alex says. “But you definitely will if you don’t want to even try. Like if I don’t get ever get to know what it’s like to kiss you? Yeah. Heartbreak for sure.”

Alex’s tone is light, playful, but Maggie feels the words deep in her chest. She’s thought about what it would be like to kiss Alex for longer than she’s willing to admit.

“So kiss me then,” Maggie says.

It’s even better than she imagined.

  
  
  



End file.
